


Dyer

by PaperKatla



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con, References to Canon, unfinished work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 23:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17969696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperKatla/pseuds/PaperKatla
Summary: The young dyer’s daughter was pretty and the way she turned away from him when he approached made her alluring, wonderfully unattainable. Uther wanted her and Uther always prevailed, he would not be denied his conquests.Years later, she arrives in Camelot, but she is no longer alone.





	Dyer

Outside the little village of Ealdor, beyond the houses, the well-trodden little path through town suddenly and abruptly halted. The path gave way to a field that seemed to reflect the sky like the mythical waters of the ocean—Spring Gentian grew upwards and towards the horizon in a rolling carpet, and dotted between the delicate little flowers were smatterings of Cornflower and Jacob’s Ladder. No children played in this field, or picked the flowers, and no man dared to plow it. The place had been a useless spit of marsh before the young men and knights fought and died on that land—now the people Ealdor whispered that the flowers grew because of the blood that had watered the earth. Young men died for the pride of kings, and the earth refused to forget. Such was the way of old magic. 

It began, as things often do, with a young king. Cenred had not been long on the throne after he had slain the last king and taken his kingdom, but he thirsted for more land. They needed a display of strength and one small village was inconsequential if it meant the allegiance of an entire kingdom. If he managed to rally against Uther’s forces,  _ truly _ then he could say he was king. He prepared his men for months, trained them until they were deemed to be undefeatable by the royal council, and then dressed them in the finest of polished armor and gear. Eager to push his borders forward into Camelot and prove his worth to his impoverished kingdom, the young King Cenred camped his men around the village of Ealdor. 

When the villagers saw the force of men stomp the crops in their fields, cut down the small trees and saplings of their woods, and make camp outside their village, they bolted their doors and prayed to their gods for mercy. In the hut of the dyer woman, though, a young girl wondered if this would be the end of her—she hoped, in a terrible way, that it was, because her heart was breaking. 

The next day King Uther’s armies marched in to view the invading horde. Cenred rode out on horseback to meet the other king, and the village of Ealdor watched their exchange in silence. They couldn’t hear what the men said, only knew that by the time King Cenred had departed again, Uther had pulled out his dagger and pointed it at their young king. 

“Foolhardy, the both of them,” tutted  Cælin the Smithy.

“Men is what that they are—that’s the problem,” replied Eulalia the tanner’s wife. “Couple of stupid men having a pissing contest. And who’s it what’s going to get pissed on? Us, that’s who.” 

Eulalia, though ineloquent, was right. 

The battle began at the first hint of the red sun peeking over the horizon.  The forces met in the flax and hay fields outside the little village and clashed together in a violent collision of blood and gore and piss and vinegar. In the end, young Cenred’s armies quailed at the sight of Uther’s knights and were felled by Camelot swords. The battle ended almost as abruptly as it had begun and by sunset only a few dozen men were left fighting while the remainder of Cenred’s men made a hasty retreat, the young king leading them. Uther claimed his victory and his trusted knights dragged the prisoners back to Camelot’s camp.  

As darkness fell, a few villagers dared to step out of their homes and look out onto their once-bountiful fields which were now nothing but churned-up mud and thick, sticky pools of men’s blood. Young men lay abandoned in the destroyed fields and shadowy woods, bleeding out slowly from their wounds. They could be heard wailing for miles—they begged for help, for their friends, and for their mothers. Some of the women tried to bring the men inside to nurse back to health, but few lived.  Cælin slit a few throats out of mercy, and the young dyer’s daughter—her heart still aching—put her grief briefly aside to coo at and coddle the dying men. She held a boy in her arms and sang to him as his eyes closed, ignoring the way his innards fell away from his stomach. 

Looters and bandits flocked towards the tiny village to rob the dead knights and foot soldiers of their belongings, carrion birds circled over the muddy fields, picking flesh from the bones of the dead and dying. And then came Uther’s men. 

The drunken knights and men swarmed into the village during the night. They whooped and hollered like boys as spilled from the trees and hills where they were camped. Uther, bitter from the recent loss of his wife and blood boiling from the heat of the battle, rage still bubbling inside him, began to ransack the village. Shining gold and silver coins were taken from the villagers, while their mirrors and carved chairs and fine horses—the heirlooms and objects of prowess—were put into carts to be taken back to Camelot. It was, after all, Uther declared, the right of the victorious to take of the spoils. He had fought hard and won that tiny spit of land, with the little village right in the middle, and he would take what he wished from it. 

All of the villagers had quivered at the sight of the tall, bloodied knights of Camelot standing at their doorstep and meekly offered up their meager belongings. All save one. The heartsick young dyer’s daughter guarded her house with a particular sort of ferocity that enticed the lonely king of Camelot. She was pretty and the way she turned away from him when he approached made her alluring, wonderfully unattainable. Uther wanted her; Uther always prevailed, he would not be denied his conquests. She fought him tooth and nail when he entered her tiny house, swinging at him with a heavy ladle and shrieking out curses. Blood dripped onto the dirt floor as she scratched open his arms, trying to wrench herself out of his grip, but he was stronger than the woman and took what he wanted from her.    
  
_ The spoils of war, _ he said, and no one argued. 

The king and the knights left the village a week later and returned to the shining white stone walls of Camelot’s castle, leaving behind a ruined village and a broken young woman. There were few crops, for the fields had been turned up by the armored hooves of the war horses, and there were little livestock left that hadn’t been taken by the knights. In their homes, people diligently began planning for the winter, worrying over their grain stores and supplies of salted meats.    
  
In her home the dyer’s daughter took off her lush greens and bright yellows and dressed herself like a woman in mourning clothes. For weeks, she mourned the death of her innocence, wailing loud enough for the whole village to hear, and many of the other women went in and sat with her and wept as well. Until, one day, when the young villein got up, put on a plain brown kirtle and an apron and returned to her dying with hardly a word. The people whispered that perhaps she had gone mad, until they saw the small shirts and tiny stockings she dyed in bright reds and blues and hung to dry outside her windows. The tiny sets of clothing spoke louder than any of her words could and soon the whole village knew what Camelot’s king had done to her.

“It’s a shame,” said Mildrith the midwife.

Eulalia nodded. “Poor lamb. What with her poor mother passing after the killin’ was done. Who’s to take care of her? No man would have her now.” She looked around before spitting on the ground. “That’s what I think of our new king,” she said, jabbing her finger at the little glob of spittle.

Mildrith gave no response. 

Carrying the child was difficult for the dyer woman. She continued her work until Mildrith forced her to give up her dying, citing the baby’s health. The girl was unconcerned. “I can feel him inside me, Milly,” the young woman said, not looking up from where she was dying thread to embroider the babe’s clothes. “He’s strong. He kicks like a mule during the day, and at night I swear that he shifts inside me like he’s dreaming with me.”  The midwife tutted, saying that this was nonsense. 

It was a sunny morning when the girl was woken up by great pains inside her. The child seemed to be writhing and kicking wildly inside her, though later she would be told this was her imagination. Looking down at the soiled linens around her, she began to scream in fear—her shouting woke the sleeping smithy next door who ran to fetch the midwife. It was Mildrith who found the dyer’s daughter curled up in her bed, weeping. “It’s too soon!” she cried. “Oh, Milly, it’s too soon! I can’t—if the child dies—”  

“Don’t you dare curse this child by speaking that sort of foolishness aloud!”

Camelot’s gentle, old physician was fetched from the citadel and brought to Ealdor. The man stumbled into the dyer’s hut, his ears ringing from the sounds of the woman’s screams. “It’s a breech birth and the child is early,” Mildrith informed him. A look passed between the old leech and the midwife—both knew these sorts of things were rarely survived by either the mother of the child. The young dyer woman knew it, too, but doggedly ignored the facts—she had not suffered so greatly at the hands of Camelot’s lusty king to give up the ghost so easily. 

Later on, she would be glad to say that she proved their fears wrong. 

It was dark before a sharp slap was heard inside the dyer’s hut, followed by the breathy wailing of a baby. The mother lay back on the mattress, panting and trying already to sit up in her bed while the local midwife scolded her. She leaned forward to cast her gaze out the little window and saw a small bird of prey circling the field of wildflowers that had been a battlefield. Gaius, Camelot’s old leech, carefully placed the child in her arms, now wiped clean and swaddled in cloths. The babe looked up at his mother with wide, blue eyes and she smiled down at her new son. “Merlin,” she declared, looking back out the window once more, “I’ll call him Merlin.” 

The old leech, Gaius, smiled down at the young woman. “It’s a fine name for a Pendragon,” he said, stroking the babe’s head reverently.    
  
She flinched, curling away from the physician and cradling the child closer to her chest. “No, not a Pendragon,” she said. Gaius could hear the venom in her voice. “That man will never lay claim over my child. You must not let the king know he has another son; I fear what he would do to my Merlin.” She brushed her fingers against the child’s head, kissed the tip of his nose. “My Merlin Dyer.”   
  


\---

 

Word had been trickling in from the borders for weeks before Uther finally chose to send his knights out to the tiny village of Ealdor. Prince Arthur had gathered a small contingent of knights to make the ride to the village. Though the village was hardly more than an inkblot on the map, it lay along the border between Camelot and Essetir, and Uther insisted that the control of it was vital to the continued safety of the kingdom. 

Arthur somewhat doubted this. 

The party of knights camped near a river that surged with winter runoff. Thick blocks of snow and ice fought their way downstream towards the valley where the village of Ealdor lay. When they packed up the next morning, they followed the river towards the village. It wasn’t until they made it around the river’s wide bend that they saw the smoke. Great, thick billowing columns rose up and hung over the village with the heavy grey clouds. At the edge of the village, the smoking corpse of a little girl lay in the road, her skin smooth and untouched by the flames where it was pressed against the muddy ground. Sir Leon crouched next to the body and gently closed the child’s eyes. “We’re too late,” he sighed.

“No,” Arthur replied. It felt as if he had swallowed a stone. “No, it’s not possible.” Digging the heels of his boots into his horse, he galloped into the village. 

The little houses had been struck with flaming arrows—the thatch roofs and wooden siding still smoldered in the damp air. Arthur slowed his horse to a slow, cautious walk, and allowed the animal to carefully pick its way around the tangled, burning corpses of the villagers. Many of the bodies were burned, and riddled with arrows, so they more resembled pincushions than men. The doors to every barn and stable in the village gaped open, the animals suspiciously missing, and the grain so obviously taken from their stores. Hoof prints of heavy horses littered the soft, wet earth—the bandits had come and gone; there was no one left. 

“They’re all dead.” Arthur turned in his saddle. There, standing near a little, smoldering hut was a woman. She might have been pretty in her own way, if she hadn’t been covered in soot and blood. A bruise bloomed black and blue around her eye, and she clutched her arm close to her side. “They came yesterday evening. They took everything.” 

“Who did this?” 

“Kanen’s men,” she replied, her eyes searching the village around him. “They have threatened us for months now, my lord. We sent for help, but it’s been so long—we thought you wouldn’t come.”

Cautiously, Arthur dismounted and inched his was towards the trembling woman. Sir Leon suddenly appeared at his side, and kindly wrapped his cloak around the woman. “Are there any survivors?” Arthur asked.

The woman looked up at the young prince. “I—I don’t…” She trailed off, looking lost and frightened. The young prince thought it made her appear young, but the vulnerability didn’t seem to suit her. He could see that the woman was making an effort to stand straight and proud even as she swayed in Leon’s grip. “I can’t find my son. There was such chaos, and he went out to fight with the men.” She held a hand up to her mouth and began to sob. “Oh, my little boy…”

“Sire!” the stout Sir Bors shouted from the trampled fields of wildflowers beyond the town. “Sire, this one lives!” 

With a small cry, the woman wrenched herself out of Sir Leon’s grip and rushed up the village’s muddy little road towards the sea of blue wildflowers, calling for her son as she ran. Arthur held his tongue—there was little chance her child had survived the bandit’s attack. The villagers that lay strewn about gave no sign of movement; their eyes were opened wide, but remained vacant and unseeing. There would be few survivors, Arthur knew. At the thought of so many needless dead, he felt something constrict in his chest. He may not have agreed with his father’s that this tiny village had any political or territorial value, but he could see from what remained of it that the people had lived happy, fulfilled lives. Now, there was nothing—lives had been taken over a few sacks of grain. 

Dozen of trails had been tramped into the field of flowers; the blue blossoms lay crushed and ground into the mud. As Arthur followed after the woman, he could see the dark, unmoving shapes of corpses of bandits curled in the weeds. No trails had been trampled around where they lay, and when Arthur marched towards one to prod the body with his foot, he found that the man’s head lolled grotesquely on his broken neck. 

A second cry from the woman pulled the prince’s attention away from the dead bandits. She was leaning over the long-limbed form of a teenaged boy who lay sprawled out in the weeds. Dried blood crusted along his hairline and coated one side of his face. For a moment, Arthur thought the boy was dead, but then he saw the slow, shuddering rise of his chest. The woman was weeping as she kissed the boy’s cheek, his nose, his eyelids, his fingers. 

Another young man lay beside the boy. An arrow protruded from his chest. He was still. 

Arthur could see now that the woman’s son was no child, but a young man nearly as old as he and as he watched the woman smooth back his hair and cradle him, he felt a pang of jealousy. Tugging himself from his reverie, he announced, “Check for any more survivors and ready one of the horses.” 

“Sire?” Leon inquired—this was the most he would ever question his prince. 

“We are taking these people back to the citadel. We leave in an hour.” 

\---

 

They reached Camelot’s citadel by sunset. Leon led his horse while the woman sat straight-backed and proud in the saddle. Her arms were wrapped around her still-unconscious son. His head fell back against her shoulder. Arthur could find no other injuries on him, except the wound on his head, and he expected Gaius to tell him much the same. 

Arthur turned to speak to the woman as they rode through Camelot’s gates, but as he did he noticed the way the woman shrank in fear at the white visage of the castle rising up before her. She held her son tighter in her arms, and entwined her fingers purposefully with his. The actions confused Arthur—it was as if she was protecting her son. “You’ll be quite safe here,” he said, trying to sound assuring. The woman smiled weakly, but said nothing. She did not appear convinced. 

Gaius appeared in the courtyard, and upon seeing the injured young man, began directly nearby servants to fetch a litter. It was only after the woman slipped out of her saddle that the old physician seemed to stop moving and fall into sudden silence. “Hunith!” he gasped. “The little dyer girl. But how did you—?”

“Not now,” the woman said, looking over her shoulder to where Leon was helping the servants pull her son gently from the saddle. “Please, Gaius, I beg of you.” 

Arthur looked from the woman, Hunith, to the old leech. “You know this woman?” 

“Indeed, sire,” Gaius replied, not meeting the prince’s eyes. “Many years ago I assisted in delivering her child—a boy, if I recall. Born prematurely and frightfully small.” 

“He grew…” Hunith quietly replied. She watched the servants carry her son away on a litter. “Gaius, he hasn’t woken—they struck his head.” 

Taking a small step forward and took hold of the woman’s calloused hand. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

 

\---

 

Uther watched from a window as his son and his knights rode into the courtyard. They kept their horses at a slow, measured pace. Sir Leon entered last; behind him, on his horse, sat a woman—covered in soot and blood—who held tightly to the slack form of a young man in her arms. She had her head bent low, her lips against the boy’s ear. 

From some shadowy castle entrance, Gaius came bustling out. A gaggle of knights and servants appeared and began assisting one another in placing the apparently unconscious young man onto a litter. Uther noted that some of the knights, Arthur included, seemed to be lingering near the woman. Then, abruptly, the prince’s head snapped in the direction of the woman and Gaius—something of their words had caught his attention. The king watched as the old leech took a sudden step forward, and grabbed onto the woman’s arm. She pulled away and looked up. 

Uther gasped. “Impossible.” 

When word had come that bandits and mercenaries had begun to creep into Camelot’s borders from Essetir and were now terrorizing the villagers there, Uther could not help but recall the young woman from so many years before. He remembered her weeping, and the way the ribbons in her hair caught on his fingers, but he also recalled her face in the silence afterward as she looked up at him passively, as if she knew something he didn’t. In that moment, the woman had become something of a mystery to him, and he never forgot. 

Now, she appeared in the courtyard, the apparent survivor of a violent attack. Something in him wanted to run to her, but he didn’t. He would remain patient. 

  
\---  
  
  


“This is the boy?” Gaius asked, not looking up at all from where he was carefully stitching the wound on the young man’s head closed. The gash, nor any of the other wounds, appeared infected.  

Hunith nodded. “It is.” 

“He’s a fine lad,” the old physician said, knotting the thread near the youth’s hairline before cutting it with a pair of blunt shears. 

The dyer woman studied her son. He was breathing evenly, his eyes closed, and face pale. Looking up at Gaius, she nodded. “Sometimes I look at him and I forget to breathe; sometimes I recall that he is mine and that he is so good and it makes me want to weep.” The young man shifted slightly, mumbling something unintelligible in his sleep. “But he’s too thin—there wasn’t enough food last winter. And he shivers so at night and all the money I make goes to the dyes and the taxman when what he needs is a warm coat. I love him, but some days I wish he had not lived to suffer the way he has.” 

Gently, Gaius laid a hand on her arm. “You’ve done your best.”    
  
“It wasn’t enough.” 

Before Gaius could answer, he was interrupted by a shuddering sigh that was followed by a weak “Mummy?”    
  
Hunith was at his son’s side in an instant, brushing back his short fringe and smiling down at him. He looked up at her, wide-eyed and terribly youthful in his manner. If he was at all concerned with where he was, or how he had become to lay on the sagging, little mattress in the physician’s quarters, he didn’t show it—he only had eyes for his mother. He allowed her to kiss his dry lips, and  stroke the hair away from his eyes. She pushed the hand that reached towards her bruised cheek away. “I’m fine,” she assured him. 

“We’re not in Ealdor.” 

“No.” 

He looked around, then, studying the cluttered little physician’s quarters and how empty it seemed of others. He swallowed. “Will?” he asked. Hunith’s face crumpled, and she pulled him closer. She thought he would cry, but he did not. “I…I think I knew. He looked at me—he didn’t look away—and I killed those men.” 

“Killed them?” Gaius said curiously. “How did you ever manage that?” 

The young man looked up at his mother. “Merlin has magic,” she replied for him. 

“But surely—”

Bang! The door to the physician’s room was thrown open with a terrible clatter and in strode the prince of Camelot himself, looking less than resplendent in a worn shirt and bare feet. “Gaius!” he shouted, and then started as the old leech appeared in front of him from behind the table. “Oh, there you are. Gaius, I need a salve. Some damn fool of a servant left my sword just lying about—I’ve cut my hand.” 

“Sire, I was lead to believe by one of the kitchen maids that no one’s been in your room since you returned,” Gaius replied as he picked through the shelves of salves and tonics. 

Merlin huffed out a laugh. 

“Be silent, you!” Arthur snapped. 

“I said nothing, my lord,” replied the young man, but his words were baiting. 

“I heard you,” the prince replied. “I am the prince of Camelot and I will not be laughed at by some pathetic, little, babe-in-arms villien. I could take you apart with one blow!”

“And this babe-in-arms could take you apart with less.” 

“How dare you!”

“Sire, please,” Gaius cut in. “He’s been through a trauma. They both have. Have mercy, Arthur.” Gently, he pressed the salve into the prince’s uninjured hand and took a moment to inspect the injury. It was a little cut, hardly worth mentioning in relation to the fuss the prince of Camelot has just put up, but Gaius was wise to the prince’s ways. Arthur, for his part, stoically allowed the leech to inspect his hand, though he never looked away from where the mother and son lay curled up together on the bed. The old pang of jealously returned, and he once again pushed it aside. “How’s your shoulder?” 

Arthur blinked and shook himself from his thoughts. “Pardon?” 

“How’s your shoulder?” 

The prince pressed a hand to where the wound lay, almost healed now, under a layer of bandage and cloth. “It’s fine, Gaius.” The witch that had taken the shape of Lady Evelyn had possessed an excellent aim, but, injured as she was, she did not throw her knife with the same deadly accuracy as she had intended. The knife had pierced his shoulder, but, after days of fever and the tender care of Guinevere, Arthur had returned to his duties none the worse for wear. It pained him, though, and he felt concern over his weakened fighting skills. 

“Take care of yourself, Arthur,” Gaius cautioned, as Arthur made his way to the door. 

“Thank you, Gaius.” The door opened, but the prince stopped, as if remembering something. “Oh,” he began. “The king wishes to speak with the survivors once you have rested. He has asked that you  report to the Great Hall tomorrow morning.” 

Hunith exchanged a fearful look with Gaius. 

“Sire,” hedged the physician. “I am concerned the boy will require more bedrest. I fear that such moving about may aggravate his injury.” 

“Fine then,” Arthur replied. “Just Hunith then.”     
  


**Author's Note:**

> Once again, this is something that I began writing in 2014. It has not been touched since 2014. Sorry????


End file.
